SOC Analyst - Lv2

About the role

SOC Analyst - Lv2 T00:00:00.000Z London Capabilities full Methods is a £100M+ IT Services Consultancy who has partnered with a range of central government departments and agencies to transform the way the public sector operates in the UK. Established over 30 years ago and UK-based, we apply our skills in transformation, delivery, and collaboration from across the Methods Group, to create end-to-end business and technical solutions that are people-centred, safe, and designed for the future. Our human touch sets us apart from other consultancies, system integrators and software houses - with people, technology, and data at the heart of who we are, we believe in creating value and sustainability through everything we do for our clients, staff, communities, and the planet. We support our clients in the success of their projects while working collaboratively to share skill sets and solve problems. At Methods we have fun while working hard; we are not afraid of making mistakes and learning from them. Predominantly focused on the public-sector, Methods is now building a significant private sector client portfolio. Methods was acquired by the Alten Group in early 2022. Alten is a global engineering firm with approximately 57,000 employees specializing in engineering and IT services. Role summary As a Level 2 SOC Analyst, you are the senior technical responder within the secure operations team, responsible for owning security incidents end-to-end using the Microsoft security platform. You will act as the escalation point for Level 1 analysts and as the technical lead during active incidents, conducting deep investigations across Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender XDR, and Entra ID to validate threats, contain attackers, and coordinate remediation. Alongside incident response, you will drive continuous improvement of detection quality, playbooks, automation, and analyst capability to ensure the SOC operates at a consistently high standard. You also act as a senior technical leader within the SOC, contributing to the maturity, evolution, and operational effectiveness of SOC, MDR, and XDR services. Key responsibilities Incident investigation & response (primary focus) - Act as a escalation point for all security alerts raised by Level 1 analysts. - Validate incidents and determine severity, scope, root cause, and business impact. - Lead technical investigations using: o Microsoft Sentinel (KQL, analytics rules, workbooks, hunting) o Microsoft Defender XDR (Endpoint, Identity, Office 365, Cloud Apps) o Entra ID (Azure AD) sign-in and audit logs - Correlate identity, endpoint, email, and cloud activity to reconstruct attack chains and timelines. - Own incidents through: o Identification o Containment o Eradication coordination o Recovery validation o Post-incident review and documentation - Execute or coordinate containment actions including: o Device isolation via Defender for Endpoint o Account disablement and credential resets o Revocation of tokens and sessions o Blocking malicious indicators o Email purge/quarantine via Defender for Office 365 o Conditional Access policy enforcement - Produce high-quality incident records including: o Evidence and KQL queries used o Actions taken o Root cause analysis o MITRE ATT&CK mapping o Lessons learned and improvement actions SOC operations & stakeholder communication - Serve as technical incident lead during major security events. - Provide accurate, timely updates to IT, security leadership, and affected teams. - Maintain clear case management, documentation, and shift handovers within Sentinel/ITSM tooling. - Contribute to operational reporting: o Incident volumes o Time to detect / contain o Alert fidelity o Repeat incident drivers - Participate in a business-hours operating model with an on-call rotation for out-of-hours incidents. - Act as a trusted technical point of contact for SOC service discussions, supporting leadership in understanding risk, response options, and technical trade offs during live incidents. Detection engineering & continuous improvement (Microsoft-focused) - Tune Sentinel analytics rules to reduce false positives and missed threats. - Improve correlation logic, entity mapping, and severity scoring. - Develop and maintain: o Sentinel investigation playbooks o Incident response runbooks o Triage guides for Defender alerts - Build and refine SOAR workflows using Logic Apps / Sentinel automation rules. - Perform quality assurance on Level 1 investigations and provide structured coaching feedback. - Introduce threat-informed detection improvements based on real incidents and Microsoft threat intelligence. - Take ownership of defined components of the SOC, MDR, or XDR service, ensuring they are operationally effective, well documented, and aligned to current threat and platform capabilities. - Identify gaps in detection coverage, tooling, or process maturity and propose practical, Microsoft aligned improvements. - Support service innovation by evalua